A Weapon of Mass Seduction

I Love You and The Holy Trinity

This is an idea essentially rephrased from an Alan Watts talk, but it bears articulating in this manner:

The sentence "I love you" contains the Holy Trinity.

The sentence is made up of subject, object, and verb, so there you have a triad - the lover, the beloved, and the love that defines them.

I = the Son = the Divine Masculine
Love = the Father = Union
You = the Holy Spirit = the Divine Feminine

Therefore the Holy Trinity is also found in the number 11, because 11 is Union, and 1 and 1 are the two wholes (Divine Masculine and Feminine) comprising it.

So when we say God is Love, there's the math behind it.

Embodiment and The Velveteen Rabbit

I stayed over with friends in San Diego Friday night, which means I left Virgil by himself with some extra food for about 36 hours. When I returned home, he seemed a little punky - he was sleeping by the radiator by the window and he just seemed lighter and weaker than usual. His nose was snotty, his purr was barely audible, he didn't seem to want to cuddle, and in the morning he didn't bug me for food as he usually would.

Virgil has always been a bit of a punky cat - he's scrawny, oddly shaped by a benign birth defect, prone to respiratory infections, and has a nasty chronic ear infection that no vet has yet had an adequate solution for. So it wasn't a surprise, but I really hoped he would get better without needing a vet trip.

I'd been fussing over his cruddy nose and ear and he clearly didn't like that and got mad at me and sulked in the corner. Even though I'd been well-intentioned he was now giving me clear signals that it was feeling too sensitive, and I could tell he didn't trust that he couldn't come over to me without my trying to de-crust him with a kleenex.

So the next time he came up on the bed, I said, "Virgil, I know you're mad at me right now because I was cleaning your ear, so I won't do it anymore today. I'll just pet you nicely the way you like. Come sit here and make a snuggle and try to feel better." He was suspicious at first but I tuned in energetically, got very delicate with my touch, and told him he was a good kitty, and in about five minutes' time he relaxed and started purring again.

I put on some Abraham Hicks youtube clips and we snuggled together while listening. Somehow, the weight seemed to return to his body - he no longer felt wispy and weak. The volume returned to his purr, and he started responding to my touch again like he usually does, by rubbing his face against my knuckles. And then maybe 30min later I got up to make myself some food, and he came with me and ate some chicken from his usual place on the footstool next to the coffee table.

Now he's sleeping next to me while I've been writing my last few posts, and the snot is completely gone from his nose. The ear infection is an ongoing thing, but it doesn't seem to be bothering him at the moment. He seems completely back to his normal self.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the story of the Velveteen Rabbit. The idea is that the Velveteen Rabbit wants very badly to become real, even though he doesn't know what that means. He thinks maybe he has to be fancy or slick to be real, in order to please the little boy he belongs to, but he's told that it's just the opposite - that when he becomes real, he'll be shabby and ripping at the seams, buttons falling off of him. He finds out that the way to become real is by being loved, but really what is happening is that he and the boy are establishing an energetic relationship. He's no longer the brand new stuffed rabbit on the shelf of the toy store, identical to all the others - he now has his own relationship to the boy, which means he has his own identity, his own spirit.

When I think about this story, I think back to taking the Healer's Process retreat with Katherine Bird last summer and how I arrived knowing that my biggest challenge was embodiment. I was so down with all the academics of shamanism, I took furious notes, I grokked it intellectually so hard, but I resisted all the movement practices that were designed with embodiment in mind. I hated being in my body. I told the group this on the first day. "My body got tired of all the pain and abuse I was subjecting it to, and it doesn't have a good relationship with me now. It doesn't trust me anymore, because I kept exposing it to things it didn't want to feel, and eventually I made a sport of how much it could endure, because I was conditioned to believe that strength was toughness. My body gave up on me a long time ago."

Katherine taught us how the point of the practices was to clear the body of its accumulated energetic rubbish so that the spirit could enter, that the spirit requires a clear channel to be brought down into human form in the way that creates that mastery of presence. My body, I realized, was like an episode of Hoarders, and I was basically living outside the house. And if you want to clean your house, you're going to have to go inside it.

I don't really know how I did this, exactly, because of all the things I have accomplished in the past year, adding a daily meditative movement practice to my routine has not been one of them (although it is probably a great idea and I would almost certainly benefit, but... I need to pace out the changes I'm ushering in). But I did agree that it was time for me to be in my body. My healer Katherine Gerardi spent a session energetically releasing the filmy layer of my D-triad, dissociation/depersonalization/desensitization. At Amy Jo Goddard's Fire Woman Retreat I declared that my body was now for my own pleasure rather than for everyone else's approval, and that I from now on I was only going to accept touch that felt like a gift rather than a theft. I had a few sexual experiences that I can say were unquestionably pleasurable on a bodily level, and I had several incidences where I was able to tune in and honor my body's desire to not go somewhere or do something, and in those instances I responsibly canceled plans or set boundaries, or I didn't, quite enough, and I made a note of it and learned.

My body is starting to trust me again, even as we're both being slow and careful about what we expose ourselves to, even as we're going out less and less, even as we really honor where we're at and how we feel. It's a process, but it's unfolding.

My relationship to everything is changing. Nowhere is it more obvious than in my singing - if you listen to my recordings from 2012 next to the ones released last month, the difference is palpable. The same goes for my body language in videos of my performances - five years ago I was frozen grasping the mic of R-Bar, unsure of what to do with my hands or feet. This year, I filmed a video guerilla-style walking down the Hollywood Walk of Fame in broad daylight, not caring who was watching me, fully committed and sincere in every gesture. And sure, you could argue that those things come with practice and experience, but I know what the feeling is behind it, and it was an inability to continue to allow anything to stand in the way of my truth.

A year ago this weekend, I sang for the first time in ceremony, and I was shown then what was meant by the angelic nature - the angelic nature is the genius of the flow state (https://www.facebook.com/arden.leigh/posts/1653808464633881). I really didn't think I possessed that when it came to music, but the Archangel Michael (via the shaman channeling) had told me to sing because, he said, my voice carried the angelic chords. I saw flashes of myself, moments where it came through. The most accurate way to express it is that that was the night I fell in love with myself. That was the night I saw myself and I took my breath away. I sang, and I saw a vision of myself in the perfection of the flow state. "I am the light I see in others."

Today, I watch myself back on video and I see it. I recognize it because I know that others are picking up on it too, describing it with different language. Several reviews of the album pointed not just to my voice's power or talent but to its expressiveness, using words like "piquant" - which makes me think of the pleasant savory feeling I get eating the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of hint-of-lime Tostitos, which is an oddly coherent metaphor for how I also feel hearing some of my more deliberate enunciations in the songs. I'm still figuring out how to put it into words, but when the voice started flowing more effortlessly, I could concentrate more on the delivery of the message, and with that came the connection to spirit flowing through me into the words, landing as softly or as sharply as I needed them to. And of course my hearing has gotten better, and much to my producers' chagrin I am way pickier about my mixes, and now I know why I was called to create music - because in consigning myself to words alone I was only playing with one half of my brain. I was comfortable in the logic/reason/language polarity but not in the emotion/feeling/sensing one. It turns out the angelic chords aren't just about singing, that the flow state is also about having a more sensitive energetic relationship to music, being able to hear and feel, so that in creating music I can utilize a more colorful palette for communication since sound carries so many distinct archetypal flavors with it. Like Alan Watts says, the sound of a gong cannot be experienced in the words "the sound of a gong."

I recently wrote to Kat Bird, "I remember during your class your saying that energetic mastery would come in handy for someone like me so I could remain in my body even when I was in front of 500 people, because I remember at the time thinking that that sounded reasonable in theory but that I had no problem with nerves in front of big crowds. What energetic mastery really gave me was something so much richer and more colorful, it connected me to the perfection of the angelic nature, the flow state. And it broadened the range of colors I can express myself with by allowing me to tap into that very piquancy I had rarely been able to access in myself before."

I don't know how else to describe it except that my house has been cleaned and my spirit is finally feeling at home in my body. That I feel like the Velveteen Rabbit, becoming real with love, because I now have an energetic relationship with myself, which when you think about it is what love is.

And when you think about the fact that my cat went on this same healing journey too, that he went from being a fussy, hissy, non-purring, non-snuggling grump to having the relationship of trust and affection that we have today (story here), then it makes sense that he and I would also have a change in our energetic relationship, not unlike the boy and the Velveteen Rabbit.

And that maybe that energetic relationship of embodiment, the bringing down of the spirit into the body, can even save us a trip to the vet.

Cooking and Energetic Sensitivity

All week I have not been able to stop thinking about rustic sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches paired with creamy tomato basil soup and how badly I want to make them both for a loved one on a rainy day, just the ultimate in comfort food, maybe we could also be in a cozy cabin in the PNW. Sometimes I tune in to the energetic signature of a thing and I just want to paint an entire scenario with it. Food then becomes a way for me to access and express a feeling or emotion. Learning to cook has actually helped me to better understand and express my emotional reality. (This also makes me think about the function of seasons - because I think of all the ways that seasons intersect with the kind of foods I want to cook. Maybe seasons themselves are access points to emotional realities.)

I think when I am partnered that regularly using cooking as a love language will actually be a way of allowing my partner an access point of emotional intimacy. "Here is what I'm feeling/desiring/creating today." I've often worried that it was a self-love shortcoming on my part that I don't enjoy cooking for myself alone, but maybe it's that it feels like wasted expression. I can access the emotion looking up recipes and fantasizing about them, why spend my energy creating the experience if no one witnesses it? I'm still unpacking that but I'm pretty sure it tracks - it's not that I don't feel like I'm worth it but rather that it feels like wasted energy bringing the emotion to fruition when I could be doing other things, given that I can still access the emotion via the idea of a dish. I guess if I had more time/energy I might feel otherwise but I have trouble guilting myself for having delivery or eating out when there's so many other things I need to birth (and so much rest I require presently). So I don't think not cooking for myself is wound-based behavior; I think it's that food is in many ways for me a means of communicating an idea.

One of the best parts about resensitizing myself has been bringing awareness to the energetic signatures I'm trying to access when I fixate on a particular material craving. Always within there is an emotion waiting to be expressed. This was true when I was desensitized as well but because I was unconscious of the desire for emotional expression behind it, I craved the material fixes in more and more extreme means. This is why I own a pair of $6000 shoes (a thing of which I am weirdly both proud and ashamed) - because I couldn't feel connected to the emotion I was trying to embody, and I thought that a pair of gunmetal hematite Swarovski Louboutins bought for me by a billionaire I casually dated (he was sweet but I wasn't in alignment with his lifestyle) would somehow provide the magick of making me feel the way they looked. (Maybe today they'll do a better job of it, who knows!)

Learning magick and studying shamanic practices has given me access to the kind of emotional embodiment that means I can feel and express the feelings I want in accessible, magickal, everyday ways rather than leaking my energy trying to find that satisfaction in extravagant measures outside myself. Sometimes I worry about how much of my ego I'm losing by caring less about the production value of bringing my fantasies to life, like I'm stuck in a Lorde song about not needing Cristal and Maybachs, and I wonder if the $12 pants that make me feel like a goddess look like failure to the rest of the matrix - but everything feels much richer now and ultimately all that energy is going toward more powerful creation which is actually having a transformative effect on my spirit and its relationship to my human animal. (I mean, the music video I could have made with that $6000!!)

And right now all I want is the feeling of a rainy day in a mountain forest cabin, and if I can conjure that with a cuddle and a homemade grilled cheese and tomato soup, I've made it infinitely easier for myself to be happy on a sustainable everyday basis.

Captain's Log, 4.8.18

I know that when I am next creating music, I will have moved on from the present subject material entirely. WCYT was me exorcising my pain. The next songs can be free of all that weight.

And while they'll still be works of narrative magick, I won't have to announce that as much.

There's a ghost that's left me now in the form of that EP. There's an empty space in me that can now be filled with something new.

I feel lighter, relieved, hopeful. But I also feel exhausted.

I know it's necessary for me to rest creatively for the moment and I welcome that, but you have to understand that I've grown accustomed to seeing the future and it's a bit irritating to be drawing this blank.

I'm not supposed to know what I'm creating next, because if I did know, I'd be creating it, and then I wouldn't be resting, because I'd be creating. Even if just in my head. I couldn't know it and NOT be creating it.

You reach a point where you start to know when you're not supposed to know what comes next. There's so much I'm not supposed to know right now that my tarot reader friend says her cards scold her for asking about me. I'm supposed to really let go and let stuff unfold now, and just worry about seeing through the intentions I've already launched: writing/compiling the book, teaching the class, seeing through on the delivery of this batch of healing through all intended mediums/genres.

I'm just letting yall know that that's the level of surrender I'm at right now. I'm literally at, "Don't tell me, I'm not supposed to know."

Do you know what that means?

That means my desire for my highest good has finally surpassed my desire for more information.

And if you know anything about me, holy shit, that is a loaves-and-fishes-caliber miracle.

For once, I care more about my well-being than I care about an illusion of control or certainty. Because I've put too much work into my well-being to allow myself to compromise it.

That's... new.

Polarity Channeling

While the masculine/patriarch polarity of the collective is rightfully coming under scrutiny to evolve his behavior into a more conscious way of being, we must not forget that the feminine/queer polarity of the collective is called to balance her behavior toward center as well.

*reminder that these polarities can exist within all persons of all genders*

I am not saying that women are responsible for their assaults because they didn't defend themselves well enough. I am not in any way advocating that we let the patriarchy out of the hot seat. The masculine is the one who needs the most jarring wake-up call right now, and none of this is meant to derail any of that.

But what is happening in our collective right now is that we are healing the narcissist/empath dynamic on a mass level. And in order for that rift to mend, both polarities must return to center. Just as the narcissist must stop his manipulations, the empath must stop her overgiving. Just as the avoidant must heal his wounds around intimacy and return to secure attachment, the anxious must heal her wounds around abandonment and also return to secure attachment. Just as the desensitized must relearn to feel, the hyperaroused must learn to self-regulate. Both polarities need healing, at all intersections.

This means the feminine is responsible for refusing to enable bad behavior. This means choosing herself over her need to be loved - choosing Love as a value over love as a commodity. The fact that women have economic freedom today means they no longer need a man to survive, but that wound still echoes in the collective feminine's instinct to put the masculine's needs and comforts above her own. We have to nip this generational trauma where it stands and cut ourselves free from the past. Trauma healing means no longer letting your past define you.

I have acknowledged the many ways I was complicit in patriarchy because it was what I learned being raised in one. I have recognized the ways in which my sociocultural disempowerment as a young woman resulted in my inability to practice discernment and set personal boundaries, and I have accepted that it is my responsibility to teach myself how to do those things.

The good news is that the dark period is over, if you want it to be. Healing is available to you now. You can breathe again, and you can rest assured that you are on the right side of history and you are supported on your path.

But you also have your own work to do. You must come to the center as much as the masculine. When both of you achieve your inner union, then you can come together in balance.

If everyone on both sides collectively chooses this, the generation born from and raised by these pairings will be the healthiest and most evolved set of humans to date. In reality, I understand that it will likely take longer than a generation or two to ripple throughout society, and because we are a free will universe based in probability scenarios, there's no guarantee that the ascension will happen for certain, nor of how deep or damaging the divide between the shifting paradigms will continue to be.

But this, the balance of both the masculine and feminine polarities to attract one another in harmony, is key to the evolution and survival of the planet.

And while the masculine's shift may be the more obvious one, the feminine's healing is just as crucial to the process.

Captain's Log, 4.7.18

Alright I'm going to address this question from The Weekly Spoon:

"The dark undertones can be heard throughout the EP, but we are left wondering why at times the lyrics and music don’t exactly fit. When I think ‘Spellbinding witch chanting tunes’ I ultimately turn to the likes of Evanescence and London after Midnight." - http://theweeklyspoon.com/music/38360/

The reason is that my being a witch is not a "brand." I'm an indie pop rock singer/songwriter who happens to be transparent about her magickal writing process, and as magicians before me have proved, narrative magick can take place in any form of narrative.

I have sung songs by CHVRCHES and Of Verona in ayahuasca ceremonies. I sang Kate Bush and Cyndi Lauper at the Fire Woman Retreat. I have delivered channeled messages onstage at Bar Sinister. I groove to Liquid Bloom remixes of indigenous medicine songs while cleaning my apartment.

Medicine songs come in any genre. All that's necessary for a song to be a magickal working is its intention to deliver a change in state. If I don't look witchy enough to you, maybe you need to reexamine your idea of what makes someone a witch. 😉

🔮🔮

Trigger Warnings and Content Notes

TW: trigger warnings

There are so many people out there who are bothered by "trigger warnings." (I prefer calling them "content notes," because everyone's triggers are different and not everyone needs a warning, but essentially it's just a gentler name for the same thing.)

But you know what I have yet to see ANYONE bothered by?

The little label on Medium articles that tells you roughly how long it's going to take you to read a piece. "13min read," written just under the title and author.

It functions as a similar warning: Do you really want to spend 13min of your day reading this article? Do you have the bandwidth for this right now? Would you like to save it for later, or is the topic just not that important to spend so much time on?

And yet nobody gets mad about that.

Trigger warnings/content notes can and should function in the same way, just as "Warning: contains peanuts" does.

And yet people act like they're so inconvenienced by a warning label, or that it's a sign that our society is too soft, that people should just toughen up, because the world isn't going to stop its triggers. Sometimes you'd think we were asking them to flat out censor themselves, the way they respond.

TWs/CNs function as a way of making society more accessible for those with trauma histories. Someone argued that a peanut allergy warning could be a matter of life or death, where a TW only functioned to save someone from "discomfort." Perhaps they had not heard of things like suicidal ideation, dissociative fugues, blackouts, or identity shifts triggered by PTSD flashbacks that can literally result in death, whether directly by suicide, semi-directly by dangerous coping mechanisms like substance misuse or self-harm, or indirectly by dangerous circumstances like missing your train stop and waking up in a place you don't recognize in a personality that is unequipped to get you home safely.

But why does it even have to be a matter of life or death? If peanuts just cause you an uncomfortable night of diarrhea, don't you still want to know what you're signing up for, in case you'd planned on going out to an important event that night? Do you like it when I have a PTSD attack that renders me incapable of productivity for the rest of the day? Do you think I'm going to be able to run my business just as effectively if I can't concentrate on what I'm supposed to be getting done, or show up to hold space for you as a coach if I'm having a full-body flashback to being abused? Mind you, I wouldn't be capable of the same depths of empathy had I not also once experienced the kinds of trauma I am hoping to heal, but do you really think that constantly having to cleanse and reset myself because someone posted triggering material online and didn't warn me about it is the most effective use of my time and energy? Don't you want me to be able to be of service to you?

DON'T YOU WANT EVERYONE TO BE ABLE TO SHOW UP AT THEIR HEALTHIEST?

I may not always get my TWs/CNs right. Hell, I made a video with bugs on my face ON PURPOSE because I WANTED people to be shocked at seeing the physical effects of desensitization. I made sure to choose artistic depictions of trauma aftereffects because I wanted to convey the emotional narrative of PTSD rather than display actual abusive scenarios more likely to be triggers (I also just didn't find them as interesting/effective as a storytelling choice), but I can't be sure someone won't find something in there that hits a nerve. These labels are a language we're still learning, and they might be clunky til we reach our groove. I may not always label things effectively, because like society I am still learning.

But I will always advocate for a society that supports more sensitivity, because sensitivity is the key to wisdom.

So if you're not just as pissed off about Medium telling you how long it's going to take you to read an article, then I call bullshit. If you're not also super mad that Medium also warns you how much of your day the article you're about to read is likely to consume, then you're a hypocrite. Then I say you just don't care about people's pain, and you're so rooted in the comfort of the old paradigm that you're used to that you will literally waste your time writing longass arguments about why you should get to keep it rather than just putting two damn letters at the top of your post.

Captain's Log, 4.3.18

Weird share time.

I looked in the mirror just now and finally had a thought: I think I'm good. I think I'm healed now. I think I'm ready to move on from so much talk about sexual assault.

Which is pretty funny because my band's music video conceived around trauma healing and the #metoo movement just debuted today.

I noticed a thought come up: "Ok, this is great, this is exactly what I asked for, everything that came through me is unfolding exactly as it should - but if I keep creating from this place of pain, pretty soon I'm going to get tired of my music being associated with assault. I think I'm good now."

(Ok I lied. That was the more evolved reframe of the thought I had. The actual thought came up more like, "How come everyone is making my music all about sexual assault! Oh wait no that was me. That's me doing that.")

Maybe that's what it took - birthing something so large, confronting so many people with my story, having my healing process written about in all the music blogs, putting giant bugs on my face so people would finally understand the effects of trauma on my body - to finally feel like I got it all out. I mean wow, how did I create a reality where I literally made all the music blogs write about my trauma healing? I was so mad I made all the cool kids look at my pain. Maybe it took that much purging to reach the bottom. I have that saturated feeling now, like ok, this is enough.

And because this could potentially sound like a complaint, let me clarify - this is amazing. I feel forward movement and potential energy again. I'm ready to create something fresh. I got all my pain out, I made people everywhere pay attention to it, and now I'm sick of it. Lol. I'm so ready to move on. And that feels so good, you have no idea.

It's not uncommon for artists to tire of their own work once it's out even if they are completely in love with the results - unlike everyone who's hearing the album for the first time these last two months, I've been sitting with it for two years. I'm deeply appreciative and I am making sure to celebrate my accomplishments, but I'm also ready to start the cycle again.

I think I'm good. I think I get to let go and just create now.

Whew. That's a weight off.

Enjoy the video, link in previous post - I'm still going to take some time to celebrate because moving on four hours after it hits the internet seems a bit premature!

Video: Arden and the Wolves, Poison Heart

Arden and the Wolves' first ever music video debuted today on PopMatters! Click here for the full review.

 

 

Magick In Its Essence

Magick, in its essence, is the understanding that in order to get something you have to figure out how to already have it. If you can hack that, then you understand magick.

The trouble is most people can't. Most people will read that sentence and laugh. "Well duh, if I could figure out how to already have it I wouldn't have to get it!"

Yes, exactly (you tell them). That's precisely it.

You turn yourself into the person who already has what you want, the person who is so confirmed in their worthiness of it that NOT having it becomes as minor an inconvenience as running out of eggs and having to pick some up at the store. You have to believe it's that easy.

Feel the misalignment and indignation in the meantime if you must. Wake up in your current circumstances and think "This will not do." That's the energy shifting. That's when you know your changes are afoot.

The rest is just reeling it in.